I’ve only had one dog in my life, so it is safe to say that I am not the most experienced person when it comes to canines.

The dog lived at my grandfather’s house, and despite my frequent visits, it wasn’t truly my dog.

I live in a house and for some time now I wanted to get a dog so he could roam the backyard and protect our house from potential burglars and even rodents.

So I began to look and in the first week of perusing, I found the perfect situation.

A six-week-old half German Shepherd, half Pit Bull mix that was rejected by his mother. She accidentally got pregnant way too early, when she was just over a year old.

For two weeks the puppies were fed milk through droppers, a tedious task for an overwhelmed owner. So after visiting the puppies, I fell in love and left with a boy, Chance the Puppy.

Initially, I was all for this; I have a large family and I knew everybody would be involved to help raise the dog. However, my duties associated with both of my jobs and full-time course load here at East Bay were completely out of mind when I laid my eyes on the precious little pup.

I don’t regret the decision to adopt him, but I definitely should have considered a time management schedule way ahead of actually getting the dog.

For the first few weeks he was like a newborn baby; he would stay up for two hours and then sleep for an hour, like clockwork this was his schedule.

I was in hell. My late night job and my daytime duties at school kept my tank on empty and I constantly felt tired. Chance has abandonment issues from his mother rejecting him and he yelps, squeals and cries if humans aren’t around.